


rings of fire (and other burning issues)

by kanoka (limeprint)



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: A Lot of Plot, Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, Best Friends to Lovers, Blood, Corpses, Crack and Angst, Demons, Ghosts, Hell, M/M, Mentions of Death, Mutual Pining, Swearing, ghost jokes, i swear this is supposed to be comedy, terrible attempts at comedy, the apocalypse at some point
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-01
Updated: 2020-10-01
Packaged: 2021-03-07 02:08:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,388
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26289265
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/limeprint/pseuds/kanoka
Summary: Hell is real and it lives in Iwaizumi’s basement rent free.When Iwaizumi inherits the throne of Hell at the age of eighteen, he doesn’t expect it to last long. Beside the fact that he’s too young and underqualified for the job, he just doesn’t have it in him to keep the reins of the underworld under control. All he needs to do is guard the seat until someone more suitable comes and takes his place.Except no one ever comes, and Iwaizumi is now a broke college student struggling to balance his impending exams, a pathetic crush on his best friend to match a middle schooler’s, and the command of the inferno burning under his very bedroom floor.
Relationships: Iwaizumi Hajime/Oikawa Tooru, Minor or Background Relationship(s)
Comments: 9
Kudos: 29





	rings of fire (and other burning issues)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> a.k.a. it all starts with a box
> 
> In which Hajime receives a package and they get matching rings.

**\- PREQUEL -**

_ And said the Guide, 'One am I who descends _

_ Down with this living man from cliff to cliff, _

_ And I intend to show Hell unto him’. _

When people turn eighteen, they usually receive a gift. It might be a cake, a car, or even just a pat on the back and a proud smile from one’s caregiver, but it means a lot, something in the lines of ‘ _ congratulations on graduating high school! This is where the rest of your life starts’ _ .

When Iwaizumi Hajime turns eighteen on June 10, he receives a sturdy black metal box. It’s waiting for him on his doorstep when he comes home late that night.

Hajime is reasonably suspicious, but he grabs the item regardless. The case, the size of a shoe box, is surprisingly light. His first thought is that it must be a birthday prank, but he struggles to imagine who the culprit could be. Sure, it’s not exactly a secret that he just moved to Tokyo to attend college in September, but he doesn’t reckon giving anyone his address aside from his closest friends, and considering that he’s spent the whole evening counting down to midnight with Makki, Mattsun and Oikawa, he doesn’t see where they could’ve possibly found the time to deliver a package to his house. 

He leaves the box on the kitchen table and slumps down on the nearest chair as he scans it carefully. His eyes are immediately drawn to a whitish shape dangling from the side, right where a lock should be. 

When he extends a hand to grab it, his fingers wrap around smooth edges - the material is cold against his fingertips. 

He realizes with a shocked gulp that it’s frighteningly similar to a  _ skull _ . Definitely too small and long to be a human skull - a rat’s, maybe - but it’s enough to make him startle. Frowning, he ignores the chill running down his back and turns it in his fingers a couple of times before wrapping his palm around it. The bone shatters in his hold, the fragmented pieces falling on the tables, and he reaches out to open the box. 

His senses must be betraying him, because the room suddenly feels five degrees colder.  _ Has it always been this quiet in here? _

He’s distantly aware that he’s holding his breath as he peeks inside. 

On the bottom of the box lay two rings.

“Hey, there!”

Hajime barely gulps down a scream when a shrill voice cuts through the silence. He turns his head, then wishes he didn’t. 

A tiny man, hair an unnaturally bright shade of red, is standing on his shoulder. 

“Congratulations! You have acquired the title of Ruler of Hell,” The guy sing-songs, jazzing little hands out of the violet cape hugging his body from shoulders to feet. Hajime realizes with a shaky exhale that each strand of his spiky hair terminates in actual trembling flames. 

“I’m Asmodeus, but you can call me Tendou. The mighty one right there is Beelzebub,”  _ Tendou  _ points to his other side, and Hajime thinks he must have fainted and severely hit his head, because he finds another little man sitting on his left shoulder. “He prefers Wakatoshi, though!”

“Only you call me that,” points out the man in a stern voice, nothing like the redhead’s chirp. He has shorter, darker hair - no flames in sight - but he wears an identical cape made of what looks like velvet. 

“Everyone calls you that!”

“Ushijima is more appropriate,” The man turns to look at Hajime, who might have forgotten how to breathe, and bows scrupulously. “But your Majesty may call me as He wishes.”

He can hear his own blood thump in his ears, his brain struggling to process whatever it is that is happening right in front of his eyes. He opens his mouth to speak, closes it, and parts his lips again. “ _ What? _ ” 

Tendou articulates each word slowly, like he’s breaking down a difficult concept to a very stupid child. “You, King of the Underworld,” He points a long index finger to himself and Hajime follows the movement attentively, as if it’s somehow going to help him understand. “Us, demons.  _ Your  _ job is telling  _ us  _ what to do.”

“Wait, no! What the -”  _ What the hell _ , he was going to say, but he isn’t entirely sure it’s respectful. “What  _ even _ ? I’m not doing that.”

“You have to, though! It’s in the contract,” Tendou chirps like he isn’t delivering the worst news Hajime could possibly fathom. “By the act of breaking the Skull Sigil, you have accepted the Throne of the Dead.”

“I didn’t accept anything!” He spits out, words falling out of his mouth in a jumble. “Shouldn’t a contract require, I don’t know, a signature?”

“The previous placeholder didn’t devise anything of the sort,” Ushijima notes in a flat tone.

Tendou offers an enthusiastic thumbs up. “We can consider it for the next successor, though!”

Hajime feels like his brain has been beaten to a pulp with a very sturdy baseball bat. His mind fumbles with a thousand questions at once, all making less and less sense the more he goes through them as he struggles to form a coherent thought.

“And when is that?” He manages weakly. “When do we find a successor, I mean.” 

Tendou watches him curiously, then flops down on his shoulder, crossing his legs. “Well, you can issue a request to give up the throne, but you’ll have to wait for the Eternal Court to find someone suitable,” His expression turns pensive. “Usually takes about a year.”

Hajime digs his palms in his eyes.  _ Demons. Eternal Court. A year. _ His shoulders fall, and the weight of the day crushes him all at once.

Determined to jump straight into bed and pray he will wake up in the morning to find he just had a painfully ridiculous dream, he sighs and drags himself out of the chair. “So what, you’re supposed to play the devil and the angel on my shoulders until then?” 

“Your Majesty, don’t be silly! We’re the Messengers of Hell,” Tendou’s eyes pierce right through him as his lips stretch into a smile so sharp it sends chills down his spine. “There’s no place for angels here.”

  
  
  


**\- STEP ONE: CROWN AND CHAOS -**

_ All hope abandon, ye who enter here. _

  
  


There’s a staircase in Hajime’s hallway. It’s not narrow, nor dark - in fact, it’s wide enough to fit him perfectly as he skips down the steps, and he changed out the old fleeting light bulbs a long time ago, so it’s fairly well-lit. It leads to an otherwise plain-looking wooden door.

It might just be the most basic door to Hell to ever exist.

Hajime balances his phone between his cheek and his left shoulder, Oikawa’s voice going off about late breakfasts and biology lectures steady in his ear, and he reaches to open the door to the basement. 

The knob is scorching hot to the touch.

⋆

Hajime is lucky enough to have a house to himself. It’s rather small, but he appreciates it, because cleaning up a whole floor all on his own is already overbearing enough. The house had once belonged to his late grandmother, but it’d been empty and catching dust since she passed away years ago. His father had been unable to sell it, so when it was time for Hajime to leave for college he suggested he occupy it instead; the possibility of escaping dorm life was one of the factors that convinced him to attend university in Tokyo in the first place. 

It also comes in handy when you need an inconspicuous place where to gather the bearings of the afterworld.

The morning after that fateful night two years ago, after realizing that  _ no _ , it had no been an alcohol-induced nightmare, and  _ yes _ , the two tiny men dressed in purple capes sitting comfortably on his dining table were very much real, Hajime had done what any reasonable teenager on the verge of a nervous breakdown would have done at his place.

He’d called his best friend.

“So,” Oikawa had started casually, making himself comfortable on Hajime’s kitchen counter, perfect chocolate hair looking as good as ever and a pristine smile pasted on his lips like Hajime hadn’t woken him up at 6am to tell him about real life demons. “Hell, huh?”

“Yep,” Tendou had beamed, making sure to pop the ‘p’. “Inferno itself.” He was sprawled out on the wooden table right next to a very quiet Ushijima, who was staring at Hajime’s fruit bowl like it contained the secrets of the universe.

“And this Hell you’re talking about,” Oikawa mused, waving a hand in a circle, and Hajime wondered what exactly was wrong with him, because no human being in his right mind could possibly look so unbothered in his situation. “Where is it located, exactly?”

Tendou cocked his head to the side, his fiery hair a crown of crackling flames. It was mildly distracting. “Wherever you want it to be. Might be Japan, might be the South Pole. Might be your sworn enemy’s garden. You pick.”

Hajime shot Oikawa a warning glance, because there was no way they were going to dump Hell in Kageyama Tobio’s backyard, but he found the other was busy staring at Tendou with the same frightening focus he usually reserved for the court. For one exhilarating instant, Hajime thought he could spot the dangerous glint he knew resided under the artfully crafted mask. Oikawa studied the demon and the demon studied him back in their own cursed, terribly enticing mock version of a staring game. 

“How about the basement?”

It took him a long couple of seconds to process the words. 

“Wait, hear me out!” Oikawa yelped as Hajime’s gawk turned into a murderous glare. “Weren’t you saying the other day that you have a huge empty basement and you don’t know what to do with it?”

“Well, yeah, but -”

“You’d rather leave it in the middle of the street, where anyone could stumble upon it? This is Hell we’re talking about. It might be dangerous,” Oikawa argued pointedly. 

“Definitely dangerous,” Tendou piped. 

Oikawa nodded in agreement, eyes suddenly glinting. “Innocent people could get hurt, you know!”

Hajime started to regret ever calling him, because Oikawa was clearly batshit insane, and he could feel himself quickly descend into madness, too, because after one torturing minute of turning the words in his head, he hid his face in his hands, and sighed. 

“I guess you’re right.”

⋆

Like every other week, Friday night finds him on the carpet, back to the couch and left hand grasping a half-empty bottle of the cheapest beer Hanamaki could find. 

“I still think we should’ve done it today,” he mutters to no one in particular, letting his neck fall back on the sofa cushion.

“Relax, Iwa-chan,” Oikawa sings from where his head is resting in Hajime’s lap. He can feel Hanamaki’s nagging stare on them, but he isn’t about to get lectured about skinship by the same guy who’s currently straddling Matsukawa on  _ Hajime’s  _ living room floor. “The ghost is not going anywhere. He can wait one more night for us to go and set it free.”

“Yeah, it’s not like it’s  _ dying  _ to meet us,” Matsukawa chuckles, and Hajime curses the day he allowed Oikawa to convince him that letting Mattsun and Makki in on the whole infernal ordeal was somehow a good idea. 

“But Kuroo says -”

“Kuroo this, Kuroo that - what is he, your new best friend?” Oikawa pouts exaggeratedly as he clenches his own glass of discount wine, likely the fourth or fifth already, judging solely from the ruby tint colouring his cheeks. It takes a lot more to get one Oikawa Tooru drunk, but he must be reasonably tipsy, because he’s letting Hajime card his free hand through his brown locks without giving him crap for messing up his flawless hair (as if Hajime hadn’t seen his bed hair a thousand and more times before). 

He rolls his eyes at his best friend’s dramatics. “More like, my irritatingly meddlesome coworker.”

Oikawa’s hair is silky between his careful fingers. If he closes his eyes and focuses enough, he can make out the scent of his favourite cocoa shampoo.

“Nosy and obnoxious? Sounds exactly like your type,” Hanamaki says, seemingly unfaded by the murderous glare Hajime sends his way as he prays Oikawa is drowsy enough not to notice his quickly reddening ears. It must be his imagination, but he feels him stiffen again almost imperceptibly. Before he can figure it out, it’s gone in a second as Oikawa sits up to fall back against the couch, shoulder bouncing against Hajime’s. 

He gulps down a sigh at the loss of warmth on his lap.

“You know, when you begged me to be your demonic partner in crime -”

“I didn’t beg you for shit, you just did what you wanted as usual,” he feels the need to specify, just for Oikawa to ignore him completely.

“- I expected some more, I don’t know, burning eternal sinners alive, and less -” he waves a hand in the air vaguely. “- Scooby Doo business.”

“Hey, I would rock a Velma cosplay,” Hanamaki protests, theatrically bringing a hand to his chest after nudging his boyfriend in the side for support. “Mattsun can be Shaggy.” 

Matsukawa nods convincingly. “I personally think Iwaizumi would make a good Fred.” 

Hanamaki’s shit-eating grin is telling as his eyes find his victim. “And Oikawa, well, you sure make a great dog.”

Hajime tunes Oikawa’s outraged screech out in favour of grabbing his hand, the ring on Oikawa’s index finger clicking satisfyingly against Hajime’s own on his middle finger.

“Iwa-chan, won’t you defend my honour?”

He snorts quietly, eyes trained on their joint hands, and distantly hopes he doesn’t look nearly as fond as his insides feel. “What honour?”

Oikawa proceeds to go on and on about getting better friends who will respect his alleged lovable image, but he occasionally squeezes his hand back, and Hajime has no complaints.

⋆

“Tell us about those again,” Oikawa had asked, eyes trained on the couple of rings Hajime had laid on the coffee table. If he squinted, Hajime could make out the letters carved neatly inside the bands of metal. 

_ Crown _ , said the silver ring.  _ Chaos _ , reported the golden one.

“As I said, the silver one is the Royal Jewel,” Ushijima cleared his throat. “It is the ultimate symbol of the King’s power and authority, and no being in the lands of Hell can disobey his orders when he wears it.”

Oikawa’s face lit up at once. “Shit, can it shoot laser beams?” 

“Possibly.”

“What about fire? Does it spit, like, perpetual flames?”

“Sometimes.”

Hajime got the impression they were getting sidetracked. “Shittykawa. Focus.”

Oikawa stuck his tongue at him, but he gestured at Ushijima to continue without a word.

“The golden ring yields the energy of Chaos, the oldest of all entities. It is the primordial void that separates Heaven and Earth. Someone must guard it,” Ushijima’s voice turned even graver than usual, a remarkable feat considering the his tone normally landed on some variation of lugubrious. “If Chaos ever escapes its physical boundaries, Heaven and Earth will crash together at once.”

Hajime gaped. “So like, the literal Apocalypse?”

“In lack of better terms for the total end of humankind, yes,” Tendou’s toothy grin gave him honest-to-God chills. He wasn’t sure he’d ever get used to it. “The Apocalypse.”

“Armageddon, if you wish,” Ushijima supplied.

“Sounds like a blast,” Oikawa grinned after a long moment of consideration, and before Hajime could even think of stopping him, his hand wrapped tightly around the golden circle of metal. “I’ll take it.”

Hajime immediately hissed. “You  _ what _ ?” 

“Does it say anywhere that the King has to bear both of the rings himself?”

“Not really,” Tendou chuckled, and Hajime, like always whenever it came to Oikawa Tooru, could only watch helplessly as Oikawa’s nimble fingers directed the ominous chain of events in front of him, and accept it with a pained groan.   
  


“Good,” Oikawa clicked his tongue triumphantly. “You can have your crown and laser beams. I’ll wear this one.”

  
  


Later that night, the two of them sat on Hajime’s old sofa, all lights out except for the TV screen playing that one documentary on life on Mars they’d already watched a thousand times, and Oikawa’s thigh pressed warmly against his side.

“Are you sure you can keep it under control?” Hajime had asked softly, eyes indulging on the elegant slant of Oikawa’s nose for one too many seconds, shielded by the privacy of the dark.

“Please, Iwa-chan. I was Mad Dog-chan’s setter,” Oikawa struck him with the same one-billion dollar smile he dedicated to charming teachers into thinking he knew exactly what he was talking about, and Hajime felt just a little bit dazed. “I can handle a little chaos.” 

And maybe Hajime was a fool, because he let Oikawa’s counterfeit confidence seep into his bones, slowly dissipating the apprehension that had been clutching so viciously at his heart. 

“This is perfect,” Oikawa squealed as he extended his hand in front of him, marveling at the golden metal. “I’ve always wanted matching rings.”

⋆

Hajime sits in what he likes to consider his private office, otherwise known as his unholy den (according to Oikawa’s delusions) or, alternatively, as his sad, empty basement (in Makki’s humble opinion). 

Lazy fingers tap against the top of the desk as his eyes scan the room for the thousandth time that afternoon, pointedly avoiding the stack of papers in front of him in favour of taking in the stark white wall. He turns around on his desk chair to face the big wooden shelf to his right, the only other remarkable piece of furniture in the space, where a series of nine glass spheres lay in a row. 

In his defense, it had been Matsukawa’s idea, back when his basement had been burning day and night, and Hajime had finally come to realize that he had to find a place where to stash the hellfire before it accidentally brought down his whole house. 

_ Just imagine _ , Mattsun had said with the most convincing tone he’d ever heard from him.  _ Christmas snow globes, except there’s flames instead of snow, and when you shake it, you see ant-sized demons thrashing around. How fuckin’ funny would that be? _

And just like that, against his better judgement, Hajime had agreed to store the nine circles of Hell in little snow globes.

He has to admit they make quite a scene, though, something quite like the satanic version of the fairy lights Oikawa had insisted they hung on their childhood bedroom walls back when they were eleven, even if the tape always came off Hajime’s walls, and they had to fix it every single week.

“Hey there, boss.”

Hajime jumps out of his skin at the sound of a sultry voice breaking through his wonderings.

“For fuck’s sake, Kuroo, would you stop doing that?” He huffs, bringing a hand above his rushed heartbeat.

The man in a red suit raises an unbothered dark eyebrow, giggling like he hasn’t just appeared out of thin air and scared the crap out of him. “We’re looking gloomy today.”   
  


“Says the literal Grim Reaper.”

Gripping his stupidly flashy scythe - Hajime has never watched a grim reaper in action, but he’s pretty much convinced weapons are just for show and extra scary points or something - Kuroo only smirks at the jab, and plops an impossibly tall package on Hajime’s already overflowing desk. “A gift for you, from the Court.”

Hajime can’t help a pained groan.  _ Oh, great, more paperwork _ .

“Hey, don’t blame me, dude,” Kuroo grunts. “I don’t like doing this any more than you do. Do I look like a postman to you?” His scorn turns mischievous as he leans over the table to match his gaze. “In fact, I was thinking that you could, I don’t know, pull some strings and get them to deliver their stuff themselves -”

“You know I can’t. I may be the King of Hell or whatever, but the Eternal Court is an entirely independent authority,” Hajime recites tiredly, reaching to grab the new stack of papers. “They’re outside of my sphere of competence.”

“I don’t know, I like this postman thingie!” Bokuto’s booming tone precedes him. The man in question, hair a spiky mess of white and black, materializes half a second later with a big  _ pop _ which somehow manages to be even louder than his voice, his own huge scythe at hand.

Kuroo sends a bitter glare his way. “Sure you do, you get to see Akaashi all the time.”

Dropping yet another package under Hajime’s pitiful gaze, Bokuto just beams. “So, how’d the ghost busting go?”

Hajime has to physically prevent himself from rolling his eyes into oblivion. “All was well until Oikawa had the brilliant idea to start flirting with a literal  _ poltergeist  _ -”

“Ah, there it is,” Kuroo smirks mockingly.

“Jealous little Iwaizumi,” Bokuto sings-songs, and Hajime can’t believe the  _ disrespect _ . One would think being the King should come with some sort of dignity.

“I’m not  _ jealous _ , I’m frustrated ‘cause he wouldn’t take the issue seriously.”

“Oh, please, like one itty bitty entity is a serious issue. I bet you handled it just fine.”

Hajime grits his teeth, because Kuroo isn’t wrong. Oikawa’s ring had attracted the spirit’s chaotic energy, and his incessant teasing had annoyed the poltergeist enough to make him jump at him, landing right into the circle Hajime had drawn on the floor. Hajime had extended his hand and the circle had caught fire at once, trapping the ghost. A few words in latin he had long since memorized, and the spirit was gone in a blink.

He dismisses the thought, because he’s not about to give the guy who called a spiritual entity ‘drop  _ dead  _ gorgeous’ any credit for being decent at his job. “The real issue is, is it me or has there been an increase in spiritual appearances lately?”

Kuroo’s forehead creases just slightly under a mop of messy black hair. “Well, you know the creepy business goes insane in the fall, the veil between the dead and the living growing thinner and all that.”   
  


“Yeah, but this early in September? Halloween is more than a month away.”

Bokuto, still grinning without a care in the world, shrugs his shoulders. “I guess it  _ is  _ weird. Can’t your little, you know, demonic advisors, look it up or something?”

Hajime’s eyes widen in panic. “Wait, don’t -”

“We’re not your personal little Freaky-Shit-pedia, you know,” Tendou appears with a  _ pop _ , hair flaming as bright as ever.

“Oh, great, you summoned them,” Hajime sighs, shoulders slouching in defeat. 

“Do you need anything, your Majesty?” Ushijima’s ominous tone rings in his left ear. The both of them seem to have discarded their usual capes for t-shirts and shorts that look suspiciously similar to a volleyball jersey. (Hajime doesn’t ask. What demons do in their free time is not his business, and he does not wish for it to be his business.)

He’s about to dismiss them without a second thought when his attention falls on the first paper of the new stash. He scans it quickly, just to confirm that the sheet is indeed almost completely blank.

Kuroo leans over his shoulder, eyeing the report, and clicks his tongue after a moment. “Ah, Inuoka and Fukunaga handled that one. They located the spirit, but they couldn’t find anything on it ‘cause something was preventing them from entering the building.”

“Probably a protective spell,” Tendou points out with a shrug.

Hajime’s eyebrows furrow into a natural scowl. He knows of protective spells that target malevolent entities, but grim reapers aren’t of demonic nature, and pose no threat to the living. 

He folds the document and slides it into his back pocket.

⋆

“Why is it always the creepy abandoned building?” Oikawa’s whine breaks the silence of the dark hallway, only accompanied by the disturbing squelch of their boots hitting the dirty, sticky floor. 

“ _ I know, right? _ ” comes Hanamakki’s squeaky voice from the ridiculous plastic walkie-talkie they’d gotten for 400 yen. “ _ Why don’t ghosts ever haunt, I dunno, a SPA center? _ ”

_ “For what, a special dead discount?”  _ Matsukawa follows.

“ _ I’m just sayin’. If I was a ghost, I wouldn’t be too thrilled about spending eternity in a rotting old house. _ ”

_ “If I was a ghost, I’d just haunt Kunimi’s loft. Bet he’s hiding something shady up there.” _

“Why do they even bother coming?” Hajime mutters as he follows Oikawa up the large flight of stairs. There’s no need for Makki and Mattsun to escort them on their little missions, considering he wouldn’t let them enter the scene - he’s not going to risk his stupid friends’ lives like that -, but they insist on coming and waiting outside regardless for some obscure reason.

Oikawa clicks his tongue and grins knowingly. “Makki-chan says your car is the perfect making out spot. We should try it out, Iwa-chan!”

“ _ Seriously, Iwaizumi, I swear your backseat is curing my back pains _ .”

Hajime very much doesn’t want to think about his friends exchanging spit in his car, nor he wants to think about exchanging spit with Oikawa, contrary to popular belief. “Disgusting, all of you.”

They’d found and broke the protective spell Tendou had mentioned, runes traced meticulously and in confident strokes all over the perimeter of the house, detailed enough to make sure nothing remotely spiritual could possibly get in. 

Or to keep something from getting out. Hajime still hasn’t decided.

Oikawa scrunches his nose as he reaches the second story, flashlight revealing an unremarkable hallway and plain gray walls frosted with dust and impressive spiderwebs. 

Hajime follows him closely enough that even in the shadows, he can see the other’s fingers fidget with the switch of the torch. 

“Something wrong?”

“Our guy must be close,” Oikawa huffs, raising his right hand, where the golden ring has started to vibrate just slightly. “You know, I’m getting so used to this I might just be able to set with a trembling hand.”

They’d found nothing on the first floor, most rooms completely empty except for a couple old pieces of furniture covered in thick layers of dust.

“I don’t even know where you find the time to play volleyball in the middle of all this,” he muses, almost immediately regretting it when Oikawa’s shoulders stiffen ever so slightly.

Eyes trained in front of him, Oikawa stops in front of yet another door.

“I think it works pretty well, right?” He speaks so quietly Hajime is afraid to breathe, chest heavy with some kind of tension emerging from the deepest hallways of his stomach. “You rule Hell, I rule the court.”

Some part of him wants to snort at how ridiculous that sounds, because,  _ does he not see? _

Does he not realize that, on or off the court, here or on the other side of the globe, he would follow him? That he’s been walking by him since he was some snotty child scraping his knees anywhere he went? That even now, twenty year old and wearing the burden of a crown too big on him, Hajime is following him in the shadows of some old cursed building, and that he would follow him to the hottest corner of Hell itself? Hajime could be the king of the whole world, and he would still be nothing but a subject to the messy, stubborn kid who once had sat beside him on the grass of that one park in Miyagi on a late summer day.

“ _ That’s gay, Oikawa. _ ”

“Go back to sucking face, Mattsun,” Hajime grunts before he kicks the door open.

Everything happens too quickly after that.

The stench hits him first, rotting flesh and something burnt. His eyes take in the dozens of runes and rings and familiar lines he’s come to recognize as containment circles taking up every centimeter of the floor like the ink on a tattoo artist’s arm, a hundred or so consumed candles lying everywhere, and eventually fall on the corpse resting in a pool of dried blood in the farthest angle of the room. 

His heart clenches in his chest, violent shivers shaking him from his core; he manages just one tentative step forward. Then, a sudden flash of white, a high-pitched scream, and Hajime’s own insticitive shout as he reaches for his best friend’s slouched figure.

⋆

Hajime slumps down on the café booth with a sigh. 

Obviously enough, the job was a complete fiasco. After injuring Oikawa, the ghost had gone batshit and started flying around at maximum speed, summoning so much chaotic energy Oikawa’s ring had been buzzing, just to disappear completely a moment later. No kind of taunting or latin gibberish had been able to drive him out of his hiding.

“Dude totally  _ ghosted  _ us,” Matsukawa comments unhelpfully.

“You could say we hit a  _ dead  _ end,” Hanamaki adds with a wink as he expectantly raises a hand, which Matsukawa proceeds to high-five enthusiastically. 

For the sake of his sanity, Hajime ignores them - he really doesn’t get paid enough for this - and discreetly eyes the fresh cut on Oikawa’s pale cheek as his fingers fumble with the strap of his duffel bag. The wound isn’t deep, despite the alarming amount of blood it shed at first, but his fingers still itch to reach out, to draw him close, to drag fingertips over skin and confirm, for the thousandth time, that he’s going to be just fine, and to will the memory of Oikawa’s pained scream somewhere down his impossibly tight throat.

Luckily, Hajime has years of experience in not touching what he can’t touch.

Of course Oikawa noticed him staring, and the brunette’s eyes fall down to Hajime’s hand, quickly spotting the item he’d located inside the bag.

“You’re not putting that on my face!” He yelps with the horrified expression of a whining baby, retracting like a hermit crab into his shell. A very dull hermit crab.

“You’re the one who insisted that we bring UFO-patterned band-aids only,” Hajime deadpans, slamming the colorful band-aid box on the table with a sigh. 

“That’s because you always hurt your fingertips with the hellfire, and they look cute on you.”

Hajime instantly averts his eyes, coughing, and he doesn’t want to know whether his ears are as red as they feel. “So they don’t look cute on you?”

“Don’t be silly, I look adorable in anything,” Oikawa quips, like Hajime isn’t five seconds away from smacking him. “Which is why I don’t need a band-aid. I have this look in mind. I’m going for hot and mysterious.” His eyebrows wiggle obnoxiously, chin raised to show off the stupid wound.

Hajime rolls his eyes so hard he feels dizzy. “Thought you were going for pretentious asshole.”

“That’s just his regular look,” Hanamaki smirks, craftily cutting Oikawa off before he could start sulking. “So, what are we going to do with the ghost?”

“A ghost?” 

Hajime freezes when Yahaba appears behind them, a tray with their long-since memorized regular orders in his arms, and even Makki looks taken aback.  _ How long has he been standing there? _ He scrambles to come up with an explanation of sorts, but the words die in his throat under the younger’s curious gaze. 

“You got problems with the paranormal, Iwaizumi-san? You should talk to Kyoutani,” Yahaba sets Hajime’s espresso in front of him. “His friend’s a necromancer.”

Four pairs of eyes fall on the newcomer at once.

“Kyoutani has necromancer friends?” Hajime gapes.

“Kyouken-chan has friends?” Oikawa squawks.

(Hanamaki snickers loudly, and Hajime is tempted to hit them both flat in the head, but he settles for a scolding glance instead.)

“Shocking, I know,” Yahaba’s devilish grin mirrors Oikawa’s own. “But I’m sure you could ask him about it.”

“How? He never answers my texts,” Oikawa pouts bitterly.

“Smart,” Mattsun supplies with a condescending smile. “We should all take a page out of his book.”

“I bet he answers Iwaizumi’s texts,” Yahaba supplies, and Hajime just wishes he would please shut up, but Oikawa’s got some scheming game already painted all over that dumb pretty face of his, and he knows it’s too late to try and prevent him from getting ideas.

“Well,” Oikawa reaches for his latte. “I guess we know who we’re visiting tomorrow.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 10 brownies points if you can guess who kyoutani's friend is?
> 
> okay so, happy spooky month everyone??? welcome to this one project of mine i've been working on for a while now. it's shamefully unbetaed, cause i was itching to post this on october 1st, but well, do with this what you wish, and you have dealt with my shitty humor through this entire first chapter, please let me know in the comments just how bad my jokes are :) 
> 
> this is my first time planning something this long, so i'm quite proud of myself for starting this. considering uni is already kicking my ass one week in, this is gonna be one HELL of a ride, if you know what i mean. 
> 
> please let me know what you think in the comments! criticism is greatly appreciated. you can find me on [twt](https://twitter.com/kuroy4ku) if you'd like to be friends!


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